Kalla's Favorite Poems

This is a collection of all of my favorite poems. You will find that their subjects are as eclectic as I am. I hope you enjoy them.

Who Ever Loved, That Loved Not at First Sight? by Christopher Marlowe
It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the couse begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

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Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friends remember'd not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

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Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame by Alexander Pope
Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! They whishper: angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight.
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world receds; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds of seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

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The Angel by William Blake
I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turn'd up his eyes.
I ask'd a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek she cries.

As soon as I went an angel came:
He wink'd at the thief
And smil'd at the dame,
And without one word spoke
Had a peach from the tree,
And 'twixt earnest and joke
Enjoy'd the Lady.

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Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies. whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on these pedestals these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my words, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that collosal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres
to connect them.
Till the bridge you will nedd be form'd, till the ductile anchor
hold.
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my
soul.

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Music I Heard by Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands one touched this tabler and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,-
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

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The Calf-Path by Sam Walter Foss
One day, through the primeval wood,
A claf-walked home, as good claves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all claves do.

Since then two hundered years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And therby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursed that trail o'er the vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made;
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed-do not laugh-
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This f orest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundered thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundered thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundered years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordaine d and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course persue,
To keep the path that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach-
But I am not ordained to preach.
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